Intel boasts Cannon Lake is "on track" and Ice Lake is "taped in"

Intel's push toward 10-nm production continues. The latest news on the street comes from a tweet in which the company says its Cannon Lake chips are "on track" and that its Ice Lake follow-up chips have been "taped in," which is to say that they've potentially reached the final design milestone before being sent to the company's foundries.

Another milestone for 10nm: Cannon Lake on track and we’ve now taped in Ice Lake, our 2nd-generation 10nm product. pic.twitter.com/DUDm3MsBaB

By "on track," Intel seems to be reinforcing its guidance that Cannon Lake chips will begin shipping in the second half of this year. Shipments of Cannon Lake in volume will begin in the first half of 2018,according to transcripts of Intel CEO Brian Krzanich by Ashraf Eassa at the Motley Fool.

The tweet didn't offer any further information about Coffee Lake, the company's fourth 14-nm CPU family that's expected to launch later this year. Although we didn't cover it at the time, Intel claimed that a 15W Coffee Lake CPU would offer 30% better performance than an equivalent Skylake part as part of its Core X-series launch. Since it's taken from the Sysmark benchmark, that figure likely represents across-the-chip improvements instead of a per-core increase. We'll just have to sit tight for more Coffee Lake details.